MELISMA | SPRING 2021 | 5
sound of silver by LCD SOUNDSYSTEM written by Ethan Lam, editor-in-chief
I’m the kind of person who rarely feels present in the current moment – I’m always worrying about the future, constantly terrified by the inevitability of the current phase of my life coming to a close. I live in the present by imagining how 55 year old me would reminisce about the current me. I feel like I’ve almost aged out of order, like I’m somehow both younger and older than I actually am. I’ve come to realize that this is one of the main reasons that I’ve come to identify so closely with the music of LCD Soundsystem, because James Murphy has always articulated the realities of growing old and the pitfalls of fetishizing the past in such a poignant, complex, and frank manner. It’s one of the cornerstones of his works. On Sound of Silver, those long standing themes are at their finest. “Sound of silver talk to me, makes you want to feel like a teenager, until you remember the feelings of a real life emotional teenager, then you think again” Murphy drones over and over on the title track. As one of those aforementioned real life emotional teenagers at the time of listening, that lyric was as straightforward as it got – it put into perspective that most of the frustrations I had were quite minor in the grand scheme of things, so why should I take them or even myself so seriously? This piece was originally 978 words long, which was way too lengthy for this little page, so I’ll leave you with
this. Sound of Silver is joyous. Sound of Silver is tragic. Sound of Silver taught me to be that most cliche cliche of cliches – to never try to be anyone other than myself, because for better or worse, life is unpredictable and messy. Sound of Silver has a track that is recycled from a piece that Nike commissioned Murphy to do, which doesn’t even matter because it’s still really fucking good. If you really care about me, you’ll play “Someone Great” and “All My Friends” at my funeral.
